In the music spotlight: Jason Ringenberg

Americana fans looking for the middle ground between Toby Keith's hawk tunes and the Dixie Chicks's dove ditties may enjoy All Over Creation (Yep Roc), the second solo album from the former Jason and the Scorchers frontman, Jason Ringenberg. Not only do its war songs have the advantage of hindsight (both "Erin's Seed" and the Steve Earle duet "Bible and a Gun 1863" take place during the Civil War), but they benefit from a compassionate and complex sympathy deriving in no small part from Mr. Ringenberg's Christian faith.

The irony-trapped protagonists of "Erin's Seed," for instance, die "cross[ing] themselves" and going "to meet the Son." As for "Bible and a Gun," its final stanza begins "To turn the other cheek is the braver thing to do / I wish I had it in me and they wish they had it too." "Revenge in that song leads nowhere," Mr. Ringenberg told WORLD, "to no sense of satisfaction. That's straight New Testament Christianity."